Better Be Home Soon
by Flash-Indie
Summary: A reunion. IchigoOrihime Her aching fingers, they tug coarse grey hair behind her ear. “I suppose this means that I’m dead.”


**Better be Home Soon.**

Ichigo had died the day after his twenty-first birthday.

Nature, she mocked from her pedestal, allowed blatant irony to take hold of the situation, because his death, the untimely thing, it had clutched at his organs not as a result of his abilities or his battles or his blind bravery, but more as a result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Orihime, she doesn't like to lay blame, but if anyone was to be tried in a court of fair justice, well, that Honda Civic should have had its lawyers on standby.

Maybe the driver too, that sobbing woman with skin too pale and hair too dark, the woman who drove like a bat out of hell. Perhaps the brakes too, the one that wouldn't stop for Ichigo as he crossed the road with downward eyes and wry smile.

His mother died like this, Orihime recalls, and she dips a toe into the water, lets the current ripple to make room for her. Ichigo died like his mother, and if there was a way that he would want to go, Orihime thinks that this would have been the way he would have wished it.

In reality, Orihime, maybe she thinks too much, because it's been some fifty years now, and it really doesn't do to dwell on the past.

The arthritis is murder on her fingers, these rickety things that grasp desperately at the bank beneath her. Her toes are eager for the damp and the wet, but the rest of her isn't…she's not sure she'll be able to get back out once she's in.

Honey eyes stare at the water, at the bank, at the trees that canopy the creek. She has no idea where she is, but this security that surrounds her is warm and far too welcome for an old, weathered woman.

"Inoue..." and it's a familiar voice, one that is almost as well-received as her surroundings.

"Hi there, Kurosaki-kun," she murmurs back, and she doesn't have to look around, she never has. Her aching fingers, they tug coarse grey hair behind her ear. "I suppose this means that I'm dead."

Ichigo, he moves closer, slides down the muddy bank to rest at the waters edge beside her. He's as young and as beautiful as the day he died, and when he smiles at her, soft and gentle, she can't help but smile back.

"Yes," he says, "you're not as surprised as I would've thought."

Orihime shrugs, leans back so that her cotton shirt soaks up the earth. "I'm too old to be surprised by anything," she says, glances up to stare at his face.

He laughs a little, and his eyes are soft around the edges, all those coarse lines that she remembered from highschool aren't there, or maybe they are, just disguised today, disguised for _her_, or maybe that is wishful thinking. It is strange, or maybe it isn't strange at all, that even after all these years, he can still make her feel like she's young, can still make her _love_.

"How is everyone?" she murmurs, and she sways a little on the ground.

"Good," he says, "Tatsuki, she still tracks me down to ask about you. She doesn't seem to think you can look after yourself."

"I can, you know."

He nods smoothly, grins just enough to show the whites of his teeth.

"Is Rukia happy?"

Ichigo nods again, "she's a captain now."

Orihime smiles to herself and this comfortable silence, it settles across them both like a child's blanket. Orihime pushes a pile of wayward fringe off her face, brushes it out of her eyes. "We never really got a chance, did we?" she whispers, and her smile is suddenly forced, straining across her face.

"We had plenty of chances," he says, and he's staring at her with half lidded eyes. "We just didn't take any of them."

"You were gone before I was brave," she replies, "gone before I was old enough to know I wouldn't love like that again."

Ichigo doesn't say anything for a few moments, but Orihime, she thinks she can see forever in his eyes, a million thoughts and words and sentences that race around his pupils.

"You never married," he whispers, "You never got what you wanted."

She sighs, shifts on the bank, "nobody ever does."

"But the people who don't usually don't deserve anything, you though," he says, "you deserved everything and you got nothing."

"I loved you," she whispers, but she's smiling, her lips are gentle and her eyes are almost glowing. "Some people go forever wondering what that feels like, to be that in love, and they never…they never get it. I got that, Ichigo, I deserved that, and I got it."

"You deserved more."

Orihime shrugs, sits up with too much effort for somebody this dead. "Children in Africa deserve more, people in poverty deserve more, mothers who miscarry deserve more."

"You deserved me loving you back," he says, and his face is suddenly so much older, "I think I could have too, if maybe I'd had longer."

"Can't change the past," she says, and Ichigo's face is suddenly stony.

"Guess not."

The silence isn't as comfortable this time, it's more stifling, wraps itself around her neck and her chest and her heart. Her feet are still in the water, and she pulls them out, tugs her knees to her chest. "You knew, didn't you?" she asks, "you knew that I loved you?"

"I think so," he says, "I did after; I did when I watched you."

"Good," she says, "I'm glad. I really didn't want you to die without knowing that. Well…" and she laughs a little, stares at him through her fringe, "…I didn't really want you to die at all."

Ichigo smiles back, runs a hand through his hair, before sighing too deep, digging his hands into the mud behind him, "neither did I. I had too much unfinished business."

"You said you watched me…" Orihime starts, and she frowns a little, puffs up her cheeks and stares with big, inquiring eyes.

"I watched everyone," he says, and at her deflated look, he adds, "but you the most."

"Why?"

"Because you loved me," he says, "you needed me the most, and maybe I didn't need you, but I did need to know that you were safe. I needed to know that you were happy, I needed to know that people treated you right and that you were…that you loved me still."

Orihime smiles too hard, makes her cheeks hurt as the old skin clenches. "Always," she says, "Forever and ever."

"Maybe I did love you," he whispers, "maybe I still do."

"Good," she says, and she leans over just far enough to kiss him on the cheek, and his skin, it's as smooth as she always imagined. "Is soul society waiting for me?"

"Yes," he says, "maybe it always was. People, they miss you more than they think they will when they die."

Orihime laughs a little, a deep, hearty one that echoes in her fragile chest, "They can't miss me half as much as I miss them."

"I don't know," Ichigo says, and he grasps her fingers in his own, "you're very missable."


End file.
